PC sales slump in favour of tablets and smartphones

Sales of PCs are set to fall for the first time in more than a decade as consumers save their cash for smartphones and tablets.

PC sales are falling in favour of tablets, like the Galaxy 10.1 (Picture: Reuters/Jo Yong-Hak)

Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer – three of the world’s top four PC-makers – saw a fall in demand in the past three months. They had hoped that their next generation of lightweight laptops would see off intense competition from smartphones and tablet devices.

The only company to see sales rise was China-based Lenovo. Worldwide sales fell by 8.3 per cent to 87.5million, according to analyst Gartner, and experts predicted companies would see their first sales slump since 2001.

Consumers are increasingly reluctant to upgrade their old computer in favour of spending the money on a BlackBerry or iPad, said Gartner.

Ranjit Atwal, a research analyst at Gartner, said: ‘We are in a diverse market and that includes personal computers. But vendors are not going to survive if they just produce PCs.’

Barry Collins, editor of PC Pro magazine, said the decline did not signal the death of the personal computer. ‘They’re still on every desk in the country and will be for many years to come,’ he said. ‘But are they ever going to return to their late 1990s heyday? Probably not.’